France's election campaign commission said Saturday "a significant amount of data" and some fake information has been leaked on social networks following a hacking attack on centrist Emmanuel Macron's presidential campaign. It urged citizens not to relay the data on social media to protect the integrity of the French vote.

Roger Stone Still Talks With President TrumpThe Daily CallerWASHINGTONRepublican political operative Roger Stone says he still communicates with President Donald Trump and the last conversation he had was relatively recent. Stone noted he has not spoken to the president about Congress's investigation into ...and more »

Via WSJ Opinion: A federal stay barring Puerto Ricos creditors from taking legal action against the commonwealth and most of its entities for nonpayment of debt expires on Tuesday, making the cash-strapped, debt-laden island one step closer to bankruptcy, writes Mary Anastasia O'Grady.

Five myths about the mafiaWashington PostMichael Franzese, a Colombo family capo, described his dealings in the 1980s with Russian mobsters in a multimillion-dollar gasoline tax fraud scheme this way: The Russian mob from Brighton Beach in the gas business the best partners I ever had..

Thousands of Russian opposition activists held a rally in Moscow on May 6 to mark five years since the 2012 Bolotnaya Square antigovernment protest in Moscow. Moscow authorities approved the rally on a section of Sakharov Avenue in the city center. But city authorities refused to allow an opposition march toward Bolotnaya Square itself. Alec Luhn, a correspondent for The Guardian, tweeted that at least seven protesters were detained at Bolotnaya Square on May 6 after they held up placards with photographs of people who were jailed for taking part in the 2012 protest. The latest May 6 protest in Moscow was named by the organizers: For Russia, Against Arbitrary Practices And Reprisals. Participants chanted slogans like "Russia without Putin!" and "Putin is a thief!" Organizers claimed as many as 10,000 protesters took to the streets for the anti-Putin rally. Independent observers estimated that about 3,000 people took part. According to Russia's Interior Ministry, about 1,000 people attended the rally, with participants listening to speeches and music. "The police and Russian National Guard are ensuring public order and security," the ministry said. Sakharov Avenue was closed for traffic, while those entering the rally area had to walk through metal detectors. Delay to protest Meanwhile, the start of the demonstration was briefly delayed when municipal authorities and police tore down banners from a stage that had been set up for rally speakers. Those banners contained slogans like "'The Case Of May 6," "Shame On Russia," and "Enough With Kadyrov, Enough Despotism" -- referring to Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Putin head of Russia's Chechnya region. Russian journalist Aleksandr Ryklin, a moderator of the rally, said municipal officials alleged that the banners were "subversive" and tore them down "because they believe that they contradict the purpose of our rally." Meanwhile, demonstrators carried Russian flags, posters, and other banners. Many participants wore badges and ribbons reading: "Five Years Since The Bolotnaya." An 81-year-old rally participant named Alla told RFE/RL that she is "worried sick" about the things happening in Russia since Putin came into power. "I became anxious since the very beginning when Mr. Putin came to power and the first thing he did was to shut down [independent] NTV," Alla said. "It was very scary. Then I remember [the sinking of] the Kursk submarine. Then I remember Beslan [school siege]. I remember everything. I am doing everything [I can] to have this government changed." Another protester, who identified herself as Tatyana, told RFE/RL that the longer Russians accept living in an "isolated country, the harder our life will be in the future." Once the demonstration was under way, Russian opposition activist and former State Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov told the crowd that Russia has become "internationally isolated" because of Putin's policies. "The country is in a deep economic and -- actually -- systemic crisis," Gudkov said. "The system of our governance is good for nothing. The country is getting involved in ever new armed conflicts. We lost 42 million [people] during World War II. Do we want to risk our lives, the lives of our family members and loved ones, the future of our children again?" Russian Yabloko Party leader Sergei Mitrokhin said "the main danger for Russia today is a weak, cowardly, and dangerous government." On May 6, 2012, several thousand Russians demonstrated on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow against Putin's reelection, and there were clashes with police during the event. Between 400 and 700 people were detained. Dozens have been prosecuted and many have spent time in pretrial detention or been sentenced to prison. Some remain behind bars. Fearing persecution, several other people, who had not yet been officially accused, left Russia and were granted asylum in Spain, Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia, and Germany. 2012 protest Participants in the 2012 protest blame police for the violence and say that the severity of the charges laid against demonstrators has been grossly disproportionate to their actions. The reaction of Russian authorities after the 2012 demonstration also included a crackdown against the country's opposition leaders. Nikolai Kavkazsky, an opposition activist who was jailed after the 2012 Bolotnaya Square protest and only recently was released, told the Moscow rally on May 6 that "Kadyrov has been de facto waging genocide in Chechnya." "Should we allow this to happen, it will begin in other [Russian] regions as well, because Chechnya is a certain testing ground of totalitarianism," Kavkazsky said. "Russia may be transformed into one big Chechnya in the future. I believe we must resist. We must help political prisoners. We need to stand up against all sorts of repression." This report contains information from Interfax, Reuters and Tass.

Two candidates facing off this weekend in the French presidential election runoff offer starkly different visions for the country. Centrist Emmanuel Macron supports immigration and the European Union, while the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen wants to curb immigration and pull France out of the EU. Special Correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from France.

Here are the top stories for Saturday, May 6th: French election officials respond to a hacking attack; A bus crash in Tanzania kills 35; A white Texas officer faces a murder charge in the killing of a black teen; Thousands of women protest in Caracas.

The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats.AP’s commitment to independent, comprehensive journalism has deep roots. Founded in 1846, AP has covered all the major news events of the past 165 years, providing high-quality, informed reporting of everything from wars and elections to championship games and royal weddings. AP is the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information.Today, AP employs the latest technology to collect and distribute content - we have daily uploads covering the latest and breaking news in the world of politics, sport and entertainment. Join us in a conversation about world events, the newsgathering process or whatever aspect of the news universe you find interesting or important. Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/AssociatedPress

On this edition for Saturday, May 6, French youth voice their opinions on this weekend’s presidential election runoff as centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron faces a hacking attack. Later, what’s next for congressional Republicans’ health care plan. Hari Sreenivasan anchors from New York.

As French voters prepare to head to the polls, presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron confirmed he had been the target of a “massive hacking attack,” with campaign emails and financial documents posted online. Macron's campaign said that authentic documents were released alongside fake documents. Reuters reporter Eric Auchard joins Hari Sreenivasan via Skype from Berlin.

BEDMINSTER, N.J. — While President Trump spent a second day out of public view at his golf club, there was different kind of motorcade taking to the streets here Saturday in New Jersey’s fox-hunt and horse country. About three dozen cars passed by Trump National Golf Club in the morning, most displaying not-so-welcoming signs. Among them: […]

“We remain committed to working with the F.B.I. as they continue their investigation to ensure that no stone is unturned,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement.

It has been more than six weeks since Mr. Comey’s extraordinary confirmation to the committee that the F.B.I. is investigating possible ties between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. That hearing, the inquiry’s first, was the committee’s last moment of public comity.

Less than two days later, Mr. Nunes, who was leading the investigation, plunged it into disarray with his assertion that Mr. Trump or his associates may have been incidentally caught up in surveillance of foreigners conducted by American spy agencies. Mr. Trump seized upon the news as vindication of his unfounded claim that Trump Tower in New York was wiretapped by former President Barack Obama.

The investigation, still in its infancy, ground to a halt. After it was revealed that Mr. Nunes obtained his information on White House grounds from White House staff members, Democrats called on him to recuse himself from the inquiry. He eventually did, but only when it emerged that he was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for possibly leaking classified information. Mr. Conaway, the most senior Republican on the committee, took over.

The encore appearance before the committee by the heads of the F.B.I. and N.S.A. has proved a sticking point. After Mr. Nunes scuttled the public hearing with Ms. Yates and other officials in favor of another round of questions for Mr. Comey and Admiral Rogers, Democrats accused Mr. Nunes of bowing to White House pressure. A series of letters between Ms. Yates’s lawyer and the White House counsel showed that administration officials had tried to block her from testifying before Congress, an accusation the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, later denied.

Last month, the House committee extended a new invitation to Ms. Yates; James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence; and John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director.

The panel has not scheduled that public hearing, though Ms. Yates and Mr. Clapper are expected to testify before a Senate panel on Monday.

Days after Mr. Trump took office, Ms. Yates alerted the administration that Michael T. Flynn, then the national security adviser, had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about his communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States, and that it could make him vulnerable to blackmail by Russia.

Mr. Flynn, a three-star Army general who was forced out of the administration after less than a month, is now under investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general over allegations that he failed to disclose payments from a foreign government or get them approved, a potential violation of federal law for a retired military officer.

Thursday was the second visit to the Capitol in two days for Mr. Comey, who testified on Wednesday before senators charged with overseeing the F.B.I. Mr. Comey defended his decision to announce shortly before Election Day that he had reopened the case into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, saying that while it made him “mildly nauseous” to think he affected the election, he believed he had made the right call.

Representative Tom Rooney, Republican of Florida and a former Army lawyer who is assisting Mr. Conaway in leading the inquiry, said on Thursday that the committee had not finished questioning Mr. Comey.

“It’s going to be a very long process, which is fine,” he told reporters as he left the meeting. “It needs to be done right.”

12:41 PM 5/6/2017 - » US dismisses Russia’s ban on military aircraft over Syria safe zones 06/05/17 12:24 from Mike Nova's Shared NewsLinksUS dismisses Russia’s ban on military aircraft over Syria safe zones Saturday May 6 th , 2017 at 12:24 PM 1 Share A State Department official on Friday said that the Russian proposal calling to bar U.S. military aircrafts from flying over designated safe ...﻿

The modern history of the "deep state" in American politics — real or imagined — starts with real leaks of classified information and ends as a conspiracy theory on popular yet dubious websites.

And how it got there raises serious questions about whether the intelligence community is trying to subvert a new president or whether it's a convenient scapegoat for an administration that's had its share of early foibles.

A deep state is a network of influential members of a government’s agencies or military who operate against a democratically elected government. It might work to undermine an elected president’s authority or legitimacy and has been common in countries such as Egypt and Turkey.

The concern in the US started shortly after Donald Trump took office. In early February, The New York Times and The Washington Post published a series of explosive reports about the intelligence community’s investigations into the Trump campaign’s communications with Russian officials during the 2016 election.

The reports, citing anonymous officials, revealed that then national-security adviser Michael Flynn had discussed US sanctions on Russia with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office, despite Flynn’s claims that he and Kislyak had not discussed anything sensitive during their phone calls.

The next day, The Times broke a story on what it said were "repeated contacts" that Trump associates had with Russian officials during the campaign. CNN published another report that night in which sources said communication between Trump associates and Russian officials during the campaign was “constant.”

Flynn resigned a short time later.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions later had to recuse himself from any Department of Justice investigations into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia after additional leaks revealed that he had also had contact with Russian officials during the campaign.

An American deep state?

The term is derived from the Turkish "derin devlet," which refers to an intricate network made up of government officials, often including those from the military and intelligence communities, whose primary goal is to subvert a democratically elected leader's agenda and ultimately remove that leader from power.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Thomson Reuters

Turkey’s deep state is tethered to the army but consists of elements from the intelligence community, the judiciary, and the mafia. Turkish leaders, like current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have waged political campaigns aimed at inciting public anger against the deep state.

In Egypt, less than a year after former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi was elected into office by the people, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, backed by Egypt's military might, detained Morsi and toppled his government. El-Sisi is now Egypt's head of state. El-Sisi’s ascent to power is thought by many to have been the result of an Egyptian deep state’s response to the 2011 Arab Spring.

But experts and former government officials have warned against using the term deep state to refer to rifts between the US president and the intelligence community.

The deep state, as it exists in Turkey and Egypt, has two defining characteristics, Aykan Erdemir, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider. First, it involves cooperation across multiple government agencies, like intelligence officials, military officials, and often executive branch officials. Second, the execution of the deep state’s agenda often results in bloody outcomes.

"You see dramatic results like assassinations, mass killings, pogroms, bombings — it’s not about tension between the executive and the bureaucracy, it’s not about a failure to work together," Erdemir said, adding that he would recommend "extreme caution" in adapting the term "deep state" from other political cultures and applying it to the US.

"'Deep state' I would never use," Michael Hayden, the former CIA director who served under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, told MSNBC in March. "That’s a phrase we’ve used for Turkey and other countries like that, but not the American republic."

From the fringe to Washington

But soon after the possibility of the beginnings of an American deep state was first raised by the mainstream media, the idea took hold of the far-right media, quickly reaching a fever pitch.

"The Deep State Bumps off General Flynn. Who's Next?" blared a February Breitbart headline after the resignation of Flynn. The article pointed to the mainstream media as an arm of the deep state, saying that the "ultimate target, of course, is Trump himself."

InfoWars editor at large Paul Joseph Watson recorded a segment posted to YouTube in early March titled "The Deep State War on Trump."

"Purge your administration of this globalist fifth column. There can be no compromise. These people literally want to overthrow a democratically elected government," Watson said.

From the fringe, the idea of a deep state working against the Trump administration made its way to the mainstream conservative media.

Sean Hannity.Paul Zimmerman/Getty Images

Fox News host and ardent Trump supporter Sean Hannity reiterated Watson's words during a segmentthat aired a week after Watson's video was posted on YouTube. "Tonight, it's time for the Trump administration to purge these saboteurs before it's too late," Hannity said, referring to "deep-state Obama-holdover government bureaucrats who are hell bent on destroying this president."

And from there, the fears of an American deep state powered by intelligence leaks, which started out as mild speculation and reached the heights of conspiracy theory, made their way to the halls of Washington.

Trump has repeatedly and emphatically expressed his belief that there has been a concerted effort, fueled by politicians, those within the intelligence community, and the "fake news" media, to undermine his presidency and policy agenda.

He notably accused the former president, without evidence, of personally ordering the surveillance of phones at Trump Tower. Trump likely made the accusation based on a monologue by far-right radio talk-show host Mark Levin and a Breitbart write-up of Levin's belief that there is a "silent coup" underway to overthrow Trump.

Trump’s cold war with the intelligence community

The president has also publicly castigated the media and the intelligence community.

"Leaking, and even illegal classified leaking, has been a big problem in Washington for years. Failing @nytimes (and others) must apologize!" Trump tweeted in February, shortly after Flynn resigned. "The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! They will be caught!" he said.

In a meeting later with several members of Congress, he added: "We're going to find the leakers, and they're going to pay a big price."

As the media continued publishing classified information, Trump tweeted that "information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia."

"The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by 'intelligence' like candy," he continued. "Very un-American!"

Trump’s loyalists quickly followed his lead, pointing to the intelligence leaks as a key piece of evidence they say supports the existence of an American deep state. They’ve also consistently singled out Trump’s chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, as a source of knowledge on the American deep state.

Bannon is the former head of Breitbart, a largely Trump-friendly outlet that has published a slew of articles asserting the existence of an American deep state.

Steve Bannon.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

"We are talking about the emergence of a deep state led by Barack Obama, and that is something that we should prevent," Iowa Rep. Steve King told The New York Times. "The person who understands this best is Steve Bannon, and I would think that he's advocating to make some moves to fix it."

Echoing Hannity’s and Watson’s words, King later said that Trump "needs to purge the leftists within the administration that are holdovers from the Obama administration, because it appears that they are undermining his administration and his chances of success."

Trump adviser and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also believes in the deep state and said he discussed the concept with Bannon. "Of course, the deep state exists. There's a permanent state of massive bureaucracies that do whatever they want and set up deliberate leaks to attack the president," Gingrich told the Associated Press in March.

"This is what the deep state does: They create a lie, spread a lie, fail to check the lie and then deny that they were behind the lie," Gingrich said.

He added that he and Bannon had discussed the idea and that Bannon compared its perils to the plot of the new season of "Homeland," which includes a storyline in which career intelligence officials try to undermine the president-elect.

Though Bannon has never used the term "deep state" publicly, he has repeatedly expressed distrust toward American institutions and the intelligence community.

After he was removed from his post on the National Security Council in April, Bannon said that he was put on the council to "ensure that it was de-operationalized," and added that the NSC has now returned "to its proper function."

'There have always been scandals … this is not new'

Despite the theories and headlines, the leaking of classified information is not all that unusual and not enough to prompt suspicions of a legitimate deep state in the US, according to former intelligence officials.

Intelligence leaks "happened during the Clinton administration, the Bush administration, and long before that," Bob Deitz, a former NSA and CIA veteran who worked under presidents Clinton and Bush, told Business Insider.

"It's possible that they came from directly within the White House, perhaps from people from the intelligence community on loan to the White House," he added. While the classified leaks that have been published in the media have reflected poorly on the administration, "there are a lot of leaks from people in the White House that reflect badly on them. Just look at all the reports of infighting between Bannon and Kushner," Deitz said.

"There have always been scandals," Glenn Carle, a former CIA clandestine services officer and an expert on national security, told Business Insider. "The torture black sites were leaked, the Pentagon Papers were leaked, the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident was leaked. This is not new."

Both Carle and Deitz added that more often than not, leaks of classified information come from the Hill. "It is rare for them to come from the rank-and-file of the CIA" or other intelligence agencies, Carle said.

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

'If you serve the state, you betray it. If you betray the state, you betray it'

The dangers of a president and his allies believing in the existence of a covert effort to undermine him are profound, experts say, and it has placed those in the intelligence community in a tough position.

"The president has cast doubt on proven truths, undermined the laws, undermined the judiciary, the free press, the intelligence community," Carle said. "He's undermined the very values upon which this society was built. So, what do you do if you're an intelligence official? If you serve the state, you betray it. If you betray the state, you betray it," he continued.

This dilemma, Carle said, has been widely discussed among those in the intelligence community, who have been forced to assess which is the greater threat: Trump’s "authoritarian tendencies" which threaten "the fabric of the nation," or the clear national-security risks posed by a sustained stream of classified information being made public.

In this particular situation, in which the president of the US's campaign surrogates are under an active counterintelligence investigation for their suspected ties to a foreign power, "when leaks come from the intelligence community, it's not to undermine the president or to protect the deep state. It's to protect democracy — it stems from a sense of profound patriotism," Carle said.

Whatever the cause, classified information being leaked on a prolonged basis is treacherous, because it can send a message to the broader US intelligence community and government officials that leaking information is permissible.

"Everybody knows the White House has leaked information in pursuit of various foreign policy objectives throughout American history. When people see that, they might think, 'So, leaks are OK when the White House does it, but not OK if they come from somewhere other than the White House,'" Deitz said. "You lose the moral high ground."

A 'gold mine' for foreign intelligence

There are a number of national-security risks that can result from tension between a president who believes he’s being undermined and the government officials or agencies who find themselves the target of that president’s ire.

"By definition, information is classified because its release could jeopardize national security," Deitz said, adding that while there are instances of over-classification, "people cannot decide for themselves what information is OK to leak and what isn't. It doesn't work that way."

If the administration continues to publicly attack the intelligence community based on the belief that the national security apparatus is working against it, that could also open doors to hostile foreign powers looking to infiltrate American society.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.Adam Berry/Getty Images

"I spent my career exploiting the positions into which foreign officials were placed when they wanted the best for their society and wanted to uphold the oaths they made to their laws, and yet, the actions of their government undermined the very oaths they took," said Carle.

Now, he said, American intelligence officials may well be in the same position.

"This is a gold mine of opportunity for foreign intelligence services," he said.

There are other national-security risks posed by the actions of a president who believes in the existence of a shadow government. In some cases, it has placed intelligence officials in the position of having to determine whether they can share information with their commander-in-chief.

In February, for instance, The Wall Street Journal reported that US intelligence officials had withheld some sensitive information from the president. Though information has been withheld from presidents and congressional members in the past, officials told The Journal none of those past decisions were affected by concerns about a president’s trustworthiness or discretion. This decision to withhold information from Trump highlighted the "deep mistrust" between Trump and the intelligence community.

And if the rift between a White House that believes it’s being undermined by the institutions designed to serve American interests and those institutions themselves continues to widen, the risks to national security could be almost as severe as those posed by a legitimate deep state.

"The deep state does not exist in fact but it exists in the minds of Trump supporters. That’s just as much a threat to society," Carle said.

A State Department official on Friday said that the Russian proposal calling to bar U.S. military aircrafts from flying over designated safe zones cannot “limit” the U.S.’s mission against ISIS in the country in any way.

“The coalition will continue to strike ISIS targets in Syria,” the official told The Wall Street Journal. “The campaign to defeat ISIS will continue at the same relentless pace as it is proceeding now.”

A deal hammered out by Russia, Turkey and Iran to set up "de-escalation zones" in mostly opposition-held parts of Syria went into effect Saturday.

The plan is the latest international attempt to reduce violence in the war-ravaged country, and is the first to envisage armed foreign monitors on the ground in Syria. The United States is not party to the agreement and the Syrian rivals have not signed on to the deal. The armed opposition, instead, was highly critical of the proposal, saying it lacks legitimacy.

The plan, details of which will still be worked out over the next several weeks, went into effect at midnight Friday. There were limited reports of bombing in northern Homs and Hama, two areas expected to be part of the "de-escalation zones," activists said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

It is not clear how the cease-fire or "de-escalation zones" will be enforced in areas still to be determined in maps to emerge a month from now.

Russian officials said it will be at least another month until the details are worked out and the safe areas established.

In the tangled mess that constitutes Syria's battlefields, there is much that can go wrong with the plan, agreed on in talks Thursday in Kazakhstan.

There is no clear mechanism to resolve conflict and violations— like most other previous deals struck by backers of the warring sides.

A potential complication to implementing the plan is the crowded airspace over Syria. The deal calls for all aircraft to be banned from flying over the safe zones.

Syrian, Russian, Turkish and U.S.-led coalition aircraft operate in different, sometimes same areas in Syria. It is not yet clear how the new plan would affect flightpaths of U.S.-led coalition warplanes battling Islamic State militants and other radical groups — and whether the American air force would abide by a diminished air space.

Russia and Iran — two of the plan's three sponsors — are key allies of President Bashar Assad's government and both are viewed as foreign occupation forces by his opponents. Rebels fighting to topple Assad are enraged by Iran's role in the deal and blame the Shiite power for fueling the sectarian nature of Syria's conflict, now in its seventh year.

Turkey, the third sponsor, is a major backer of opposition factions and has also sent troops into northern Syria, drawing the ire of Assad and his government.

Yet troops from the three countries are now expected to secure four safe zones. An official with Russia's military general staff said other countries may eventually have a role in enforcing the de-escalation areas.

He said "security belts" will be created along the borders of the "de-escalation zones" to prevent incidents and fighting between opposing sides. The checkpoints and observation posts will ensure free movement of unarmed civilians and humanitarian aid and will facilitate economic activities, he said.

Rebels have expressed concerns the deal is a prelude to a de facto partitioning of Syria into spheres of influence.

Osama Abo Zayd, a spokesman for the Syrian military factions at the Kazakhstan talks, told The Associated Press it was "incomprehensible" for Iran to act as a guarantor of the deal. A cease-fire is unsustainable in the presence of the Iranian-backed militias in Syria, he said.

"We can't imagine Iran playing a role of peace," Abo Zayd said.

The U.S. sent a senior White House official to the Kazakh capital of Astana, where representatives of Russia, Turkey and Iran signed the deal, but had no role in the deal.

The idea of armed monitors is a new element — observers deployed in the early years of the Syrian conflict, including U.N. and Arab League observers, were unarmed.

But it's difficult to imagine how many boots on the ground would be needed to monitor the yet to be mapped areas or how and where exactly Russian, Iranian and Turkish troops would patrol.

"If that happens, we would be looking at a more serious effort than anything in the past," Aron Lund, a Syria expert wrote in an article Friday.

Lund said that from the outside, the agreement "does not look like it has great chances of success" and seems to "lack a clear mechanism to resolve conflicting claims and interpretations."

Late Friday, a Syrian opposition coalition, the High Negotiations Committee, denounced the deal in a strongly worded statement. The Western, Saudi-backed HNC said the deal lacks legitimacy and seeks to divide the country.

The HNC also said the deal was an attempt to give Syrian government troops military victories they could not achieve on the battleground by neutralizing rebel-held areas. It called on the U.S. and other Arab allied countries, to prevent the implementation of the deal.

A rebel commander in northern Hama said nearly an hour after the deal went into effect, battles raged with government forces. The area, south of Latamneh, is expected to be part of the deal. Jamil al-Saleh, the commander, said government shelling was intense amid an attempt to advance in the area, scene to fierce battles for weeks. "What deal?" he scoffed.

A previous cease-fire agreement signed in Astana on Dec. 30 helped reduce overall violence in Syria for several weeks but eventually collapsed. Other attempts at a cease-fire in Syria have all ended in failure.

The "de-escalation zones" will be closed to military aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition, the Russian official who signed the agreement, Alexander Lavrentye, said Friday. Under the plan, Assad's air force — and presumably Russian, too — would also halt flights over those areas.

In rebel-held Idlib, a protest was held Friday against the plan, denounced as a plot to "divide Syria."

"Any person or state who enters this land to divide it is the enemy of the Syrian people" activist Abed al-Basset Sarout told the crowd.

Some refugees were skeptical.

Ahmad Rabah, a Syrian refugee from Homs now in Lebanon, said he did not trust Assad's forces and going back to so-called safe zones would be tantamount to living in a "big prison."

The Pentagon said the de-escalation agreement would not affect the U.S.-led air campaign against IS.

"The coalition will continue to target ISIS wherever they operate to ensure they have no sanctuary," said Pentagon spokesman Marine Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway. ISIS is an alternative acronym for the Sunni militant group.

Rudskoi also suggested that Syrian government forces, freed up as a result of the safe areas, could be rerouted to fight against IS in the central and eastern part of Syria.

Another question left unanswered is how the deal would affect U.S. airstrikes targeting al-Qaida's positions in Syria.

U.S. warplanes have frequently struck the al-Qaida affiliate in the northern Idlib province, where the militant group dominates.

But under Thursday's deal, the entire province is designated to be one of the four "de-escalation zones."

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin said that if implemented the deal will allow for the separation of the opposition from IS fighters and those of the al-Qaida affiliate. He did not elaborate.

Syria's government has said that although it will abide by the agreement, it would continue fighting "terrorism" wherever it exists, parlance for most armed rebel groups fighting government troops.

The hurricane is the unprecedented interference in our democratic election by the Russian government.

It’s not controversial that Russia sought to influence our presidential election: seventeen federal intelligence agencies have already confirmed it. Among other things, over the summer of 2016, the FBI and state election agencies detected Russian cyber-intrusion into voter registration systems.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort (right) and Carter Page, a former advisor to the Trump campaign, at Trump SoHo Hotel, June 22, 2016, New York City. Ron Fein and Julian Schreibman write that just as Al Capone was done in by income taxes, the key to the puzzle about whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians may lie in campaign finance laws. Drew Angerer/Getty

It’s quite possibly the most effective foreign “active measures” operation ever conducted against the United States. What remains to be determined is whether, and how deeply, members of the Trump campaign were involved in the scheme.

Perhaps counterintuitively, the best way to investigate that question may not lie in counterintelligence or criminal conspiracy law. Just as Al Capone was done in by income taxes, the key to this puzzle may lie in the mundane obligations of campaign finance laws.

That’s where the Federal Election Commission comes in. Created by Congress in 1975, the FEC is an independent commission charged with investigating and enforcing violations of our nation’s campaign finance laws. It has broad investigative powers, including the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents and to compel testimony.

Notably, it is both bipartisan (by law, no more than three of its six members may be from the same political party) and independent (its members do not report to the President nor Congressional leaders).

Federal campaign finance law prohibits a “foreign national” (such as the Russian government) from spending money to influence U.S. elections. And it also provides that if a political campaign “coordinates” with anyone outside the campaign who is spending money to influence the election, then the campaign would have to treat the outside money as in-kind contributions (which, from a foreign government, are illegal), and report them on federal disclosure forms.

In this case, it would violate at least three different campaign finance laws if Trump campaign advisors coordinated with the Russian government.

The issue for the FEC is not whether Trump's campaign made promises in exchange for Russian assistance, nor whether Russian activity swayed the election. The questions for the FEC are much narrower:

(1) Were Russian-funded campaign communications made at the request or suggestion of the campaign, or (2) did campaign advisors fail to observe a strict 120-day waiting period between working for the Trump campaign and the Russian government?

Either would constitute “ coordination ” of campaign communications under campaign finance law.

Now, two non-partisan watchdog organizations, Free Speech For People and Campaign for Accountability, have filed a complaint with the FEC against the Trump campaign and the Russian government raising exactly these questions. This filing creates a legal obligation for the FEC to analyze whether there is “reason to believe” that there was a violation of federal campaign finance law.

The challenge for the FEC is that while the nature of the violation is simple, the extent and nature of the investigation is on a scale far beyond what it has handled in the past. And unfortunately, the FEC has itself been the victim of neglect: it is short by one member (a Democrat), and the other five are serving on a temporary basis, years after their original terms expired.

(Four, including both Democrats, were appointed by President George W. Bush; the fifth, a Republican, was appointed by President Obama.) And in recent years it has acquired a reputation for delay, dysfunction and deadlock.

The alternatives, however, are less than ideal. Although the FBI recently confirmed that its investigation is ongoing, that inquiry is complicated—some would say compromised—in multiple ways, not least by the recusal of the Attorney General himself.

In theory, Congress has the resources and credibility to run an independent investigation. But so far it has not had the will. House efforts have fizzled or devolved into partisanship, and the Senate investigation does not even have permanent staff assigned.

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The allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, with the potential coordination of Trump campaign advisors, represents the greatest threat to the integrity of our elections that the nation has ever seen.

So if the FEC can rise to the challenge, this could be its finest hour. For what may be the most explosive investigation in American history, the FEC may not be the bipartisan investigative body that America deserves. But it may be the one we need right now.

"I am eager, indeed anxious, to testify in full public session, have requested no immunity and am ready to go," Stone wrote. He also said that he "rejects" the claim that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Guccifer 2.0 are Russian assets. He said the U.S. government has offered no proof to support that assessment.

Stone communicated through Twitter direct messages with Guccifer 2.0, a hacker who has claimed responsibility for breaching the Democratic National Committee. Stone has said that he was unaware at the time that U.S. officials believed the hacker had ties to Russia.

The letters to Stone and Page, which were shared with the AP on Friday, were virtually identical. The committee asked them to provide emails, text messages, letters, phone records or any other relevant information they have about meetings or contacts that they or any other individual affiliated with the Trump campaign had with Russian officials or representatives of Russian business interests.

The requests seek information about any contacts that occurred between the day Trump announced his candidacy, June 16, 2015, and his inauguration on Jan. 20. It also asks for information about Stone and Page's financial and real estate holdings related to Russia, including financial securities or holdings they might have sold or divested during that period.

In a written response to the committee's request, Page argued that the panel was conducting a "comically fake inquiry." At the same time, Page pledged to cooperate with the committee to "help resolve all of the false allegations which led to this fanciful witch hunt in the first place."The committee also asks that Page and Stone appear for closed interviews with intelligence committee staff. Lawmakers set a May 9 and May 19 deadline for various materials to be provided to the committee.

Page told the committee that the material he has will be "minuscule in comparison to the full database of information" the Obama administration collected during "last year's completely unjustified" secret warrant. Page said law enforcement officials under the Obama administration obtained a sealed order from a secretive intelligence court last summer to monitor his communications to investigate whether he was acting as a Russian agent.

Page said the warrant put him under "unscrupulous surveillance for many months" and targeted him for exercising his First Amendment rights both in 2016 and earlier.

Page met with a Russian intelligence operative in 2013 and provided him documents about the energy industry, according to court documents from a 2015 prosecution alleging a Cold War-style spy ring in New York. Page, referred to in the filing as "Male-1," is not accused of wrongdoing and said in a statement that he shared "basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents."

Little is known about Page's role in the campaign.

In March, Trump personally announced that Page was part of a newly minted foreign policy advisory team. But as questions began swirling about Page's ties to Russia, the campaign started moving away from the investment banker. Trump has since said he has no relationship with him.

"I originally joined the Trump movement and eventually volunteered for a small, unpaid, informal role in the campaign since I knew our candidate would finally help lead this country and the world toward peace through strength," Page said in his letter to the committee.

Flynn, Trump's ousted national security adviser, also received a letter from the committee asking him to turn over information and documents related to the committee's investigation into potential ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. A person with direct knowledge of the letter's contents confirmed Flynn received it. The person demanded anonymity to discuss the information because of its sensitive nature.

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